alphadogg writes "Google has reserved 1 million phone numbers with Level 3, signaling that it may finally be ready to roll out its long-anticipated Google Voice service. The free service, announced in March, lets users unify their phone numbers, allowing them to have a single number through Google Voice that rings a call through to all their phones. Sources could not say when the 1 million numbers may be assigned. Level 3 has been supplying Google with phone numbers since the introduction of Google Voice, so the 1 million numbers are an indication Google is close to adding a significant number of users. A public launch has been anticipated since Google said in March the service would be 'open to new users soon.' One early user said: 'I've only been using Google Voice for a few months, but it's completely changed the way I use voicemail and communicate... When it goes public, I think the rush to grab Google Voice numbers is going to be stunning. I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it.'"
for this for my G1. I'm surprised this wasn't included, even though it's in closed beta. PF Voicemail Fusion works ok, but youmail is horrible for the G1. Google Voice already has an android app, so I can't wait!
I have a google voice account (transferred over from grandcentral) and in general I didn't find the GV android app to be all that usable. The extra overhead ended up making me miss a lot of calls that I wouldn't otherwise have. Another problem was that dialing out either involved using the GV application which dials your Google Voice number and places the call via their system or making calls from your real number. The former put a 10 - 15 second overhead on making a call and the latter tends to confuse people because they are receiving a call from a different number than the one they (were told to) call.
I ended up giving my real number to anyone that mattered. I still use my Google Voice number for anything online or calls/text messages that I potentially want to screen. It's a great service but it didn't work for me as an every day number.
Disclaimer: I wrote the GV Android app in question.
I didn't find the GV android app to be all that usable. The extra overhead ended up making me miss a lot of calls that I wouldn't otherwise have. Another problem was that dialing out either involved using the GV application which dials your Google Voice number and places the call via their system or making calls from your real number. The former put a 10 - 15 second overhead on making a call and the latter tends to confuse people because they are receiving a call from a different number than the one they (were told to) call.
If you haven't tried the latest version, I recommend you do so; it makes the dialing process much more seamless. If you still have problems with, don't hesitate to shoot me an email: gv {at} evancharlton {dot} com (that goes for anyone else that has questions or suggestions).
For what it's worth, T-Mobile lets me change the default voice mail phone number on my BlackBerry. I changed it to my Google Voice number from the crappy t-Mobile voice mailbox.
It's fantastic. I now have instant junk call filtering - I just send to voice on my cellphone and the caller get the disconnect signal after a ring or two.
My friends all get custom greetings before leaving voice mail, and I receive an email as soon as they do. Also, I can play back my messages in the order I want without using a
It seems to me that the same people that would be all for a techy solution like this are the very same people who are unlikely to even own a landline. Nearly universally, everyone who I know in their mid 20s - early 30s don't have a landline and have only one number - their cellphone.
I can see a market for this for intense businessmen who might have 2 lines at home, a private line at work, and another line at their second home. But is there a demand from the tech savy young google user?
Nearly universally, everyone who I know in their mid 20s - early 30s don't have a landline
The same used be be true for me, but now my parents, aunts and uncles, former teachers, etc. have all switched. I would say that nearly every person I know 15-62 have switched solely to cell phones in place of home phones. The two people I know with a home phone, my grandfather (85) and grandmother (82) switched to Vonage over two years ago to the complete surprise of the entire family. Reason they gave "It's a fixed monthly cost that works for what they need."
I really think the traditional home phone line could be dead in a decade or so.
Even if you only have one line, you might like to use this. If a business asks for your phone number, you could give them the Google Talk number. Then, if they abuse it, you simply tell Google Talk to either always push them to voice mail or (better yet) to play the "this line is disconnected" message.
I imagine you could, but political campaigns and charities can ignore the DNC list anyway. More importantly, Google Voice gives you a lot more control over screening your calls before you answer them.
I've already registered mine on the DNC list, but additionally, you can also do fun things like push all unknown callers directly to voice mail. Then you can quickly review and delete your VM's on their web site.
Naw. We're all geeks here (right?) - setting up the software is the fun part. We do this shit because it's interesting to us -- and that's also the reason that we're so pale.
The real difficulty in operating one's own personal PBX is maintaining the sodden thing and the hardware that runs it, and then trying to justify paying for it.
In this context, Google Voice works just fine for a single independent user, has zero maintenance, and is free. I don't even need an Internet connection for to work -- the who
Now telemarketers, religious freaks, and campaign-donation guys will be able to find me no matter where I am.
I am a Google voice user. Zero automated telemarketing calls get through to me. The system defaults to requiring callers with previously unseen caller-id's to state their name before it will even ring my real phone(s). No automated system knows how to do that so far.
Even if a real person calls and does get past the name prompt, I can "answer" the phone by sending the call to voice-mail and listening in, the way you can with a real physical answering machine.
I am also able to blacklist specific caller-id numbers to either go directly to voice-mail or to play the "this number has been disconnected" recording and tone pattern.
Worst case, I can also configure all unknown caller-id numbers to go directly to voice-mail too.
Since signing up with GrandCentral a year or two ago (the predecessor company that google purchased) my annoying call rate has gone to zero.
Not exactly innovative. Verizon gave me that at my apartment in 2002.
What exactly is your point? The service as a whole is very useful, and somewhat innovative. There are precedents for many--if not all--of the features, but many of them would have required a staffed calling center not that long ago.
So here's an example of what I like. I can always route my parents to my home number, and my friends to my office during the day, my cell phone at night. I can route colleagues to my office by day, direct to voice mail at night. If I'm going on vacation and staying at a cabin where cell signal is bad, and I want to be reached by one particular friend, I can route their calls to the cabin's land-line before I leave.
And then beyond all that, when people leave a voice mail, GVoice automatically transcribes it. It's not perfect, but it's often faster to get the idea of what they called about without having to listen to a long, rambling VM.
Of course, the whole point is that you get to decide which of your contacts can reach you at which phone. You can make it so that if they're not in your contact list, they get voice mail only.
You can also screen callers (they state their name to a recording) based on whether they are in your contact list or whether they are blocking caller ID.
Queue Dr. Evil '1 million phone numbers... MMUUUAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!'
It certainly sounds like a big number, but it isn't. What I am wondering is what the Telco execs are doing about it.
A little history for./ The telco's stuck it to Vonage two different ways. 1. whisper campaign in the equity markets claiming Vonage didn't own the value-drivers in their business. 100% bunk. Amazon doesn't own the 'tubes' that connect to their service, has fantastical valuations. With Vonage, it *is* a very big problem??? But equity manager ran with it and hammered Vonage. 2. Patent litigation. Especially bad and ridiculously obvious patents were used to extract the Telco's vig. (hint, look up the word vigorish)
Google's much more well-capitalized and swimming in the deep end of Telco waters if they attempt to unify POTS/wireless with VOIP. When will Telco exec's send the legal dogs after Google?
Whisper campaign? Well, let's see. If the end-game for Vonage is to replace the existing hardwired telephone service there is one little problem - they need the wires to be maintained for their customer's DSL links. Nobody really believes that the wireline maintenance is going to be covered by the revenue generated by selling naked DSL service.
The end result of this is Vonage can be a bit player off to the side but should they "succeed" they really fail. Not a good overall strategy. Yes, I guess you could say they don't own the value-drivers. More importantly, they desperately need their competition in order to survive. And their competition has to be both doing well enough to support their business and make it possible for them to compete.
Worse yet for Vonage and their ilk is that the government has mandated the wireline telephone companies have to provide for data services and bulk-purchased voice services to be priced below real costs. As long as these services are provided to a few players and the main part of the telco revenue is still providing telephone service everything will be fine. But, again, should Vonage or any of their sort really "succeed", they fail.
Would the right answer be to forcibly separate the wireline facilities from the telco voice providers? Sure, except under current rules no wireline facility could operate because the services that are sold today to outside companies are done so at a loss. There are a lot of wires out there and the maintenance of this is quite costly. Today that bill is paid for by voice services, mostly for business customers that have entirely different billing arrangements than residential customers do.
So pulling the facilities management away from the telcos would simply require the data and bulk services to be sold at real prices. So the $14.99 DSL service would be more like $99. At today's pricing it makes sense for an individual to drop their $25 telephone and $15 DSL to something like $15 DSL and Magic Jack at $20 a year. If the DSL service was priced including wireline maintenance costs, it wouildn't be practical at all. The real problem there would be lost of people can't afford $1200 a year for Internet and would drop it. Loss of market share like this would cripple plenty of things and would change the landscape of Internet service providers in the US.
What is the real answer? I suspect it is to abandon wireline maintenance completely and replace it with new fiber optic links from a completely new company. In about 50 years. In the meantime, we will have the existing wires in the ground and on the poles until they need repair. And with nobody repairing it, people will just do without wired connections.
"I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it."
And I have friends who have never heard of Google Voice and completely lack the technical understanding to want to use it. I hate it when people use anecdotal evidence to suggest how great or grand something is going to be.
Most of my friends actually have just one phone (their cell) to their name anyway. While I see some of the features being semi-useful for a single-phone use
My office is situated such that I can only get cell phone signal if I'm standing at the window. I've got my GVoice set up to send all calls to my office phone during the day, and to both home and cell phone in the evenings and weekends.
There are a lot of reasons why one might want to take calls directly on a different line than their cell phone.
Is there a way automate this using the bluetooth settings on your phone and computer at the office, such that when your phone is in range, google forwards calls to your office phone, and when your phone is out of range, google forwards calls to your cell?
I have sometimes thought that such a service would be handy (and, in fact, I know someone who uses one) but he has to manually tell the service where he is all the time. Granted, it's a quick process, but it's one more thing to think about. Sometimes h
I only give my mobile number out sparingly. I tell most people to call my land line. I do this because I don't want to be accessible to every one all the time. Most calls can wait. If I had this service it would mean more relatives calling me up while driving to tell me to go on line and look at some random news story. Right now, I think I'll stick with having two numbers.
Actually, you can flag numbers to direct straight to voice mail. Which then gets transcibed into and email. The service gives you some pretty good controls over handling calls and routing, based on factors like time, caller and your availability.
In your case, you can give out the number freely and only forward people in your "Friends" group to you cell phone.
That's the cool thing. You can set up profiles and automatically direct some people to only a specific phone, or right into voice mail. You can even set up personalized ring-back tones and VM outgoing messages so that if your father calls you, the VM says, "Hi Dad, sorry you didn't make it past the screen!"
If Google has a number shortage, it's kind of odd that they don't let people transfer their existing numbers to Google Voice. That would probably free up a lot of the numbers they already have.
I have a Google Voice number, and if I could transfer my existing number into it, I would do so.
Just curious, if you are using a Google Voice number as your "one number to rule them all", and the service is down, what happens? Even if it goes down temporarily (as Gmail does constantly, ahem) does that mean incoming calls cant get to you?
Also, since Google is obviously able to hijack the voice audio, what's to say they aren't listening to / recording calls? I realize they "aren't evil" but, still.
I like the concept of this service, but don't want to have my incoming calls relying on Google's service to make it through.
Not sure where the bad attitude is coming from, I never suggested that these things *do* happen, just asking about the potential for them to happen. And my first question was just that, a question, if it absolutely relies on google's service to route your call through.
Additionally, it introduces ANOTHER variable of service into the mix. Now I rely on my telco to work, with this, I rely on my telco AND Google to work.
And Google's track record with gmail being up and down in my own personal experience is no
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 19, @03:18PM (#28395009)
They own your primary e-mail address, route your telephone conversations, facilitate your mailing list, keep track of your calendar, engineer your cell phone platform, access maps for you, host your videos, and answer any question you could have about anything through their search engine.
First question: Do you really think they are funded by ad revenue? How many ads have you clicked on since you started surfing the web?
Second question: What is more profitable, providing free web services, or selling personal data they have been harvesting for years, many times tied to an IP, MAC, Username, and the identity created by the consistencies of your browsing habits?
One reason I never liked other net phone services is that you can't dial 911 and when my computer reboots, or decides to explode, my phone dies;
Vonage (VoIP) understands 911 just fine, though yes, no computer, no phone. But there are many people who have no land line at all, instead using only cell...
This isn't a net phone, per se; it's a phone abstraction. A number that lives out there in the phone cloud, which you point to whatever number(s) you wish to receive calls at.
You can still dial directly out from your cell phone, home phone, office phone, whatever. 911 is based on the number you're calling from. However, if you want your GVoice number to show up on caller ID, you would instead initiate the call from the GVoice web site or the android/iphone app.
In other words, as long as you've got a working phone, you've got 911. The use of GVoice doesn't change that at all.
I'm sure any calls between Google VOIP customers will be VOIP on the backend. I'm sure they'll integrate it into Google Talk as well, and then your end could be totally VOIP, and if the other party uses Google Talk it would be VOIP end-to-end. Further, if they're smart, they'll let you use your SIP-based "hard" phones with the service as well.
Second, ENUM is already standard that allows you to use DNS to direct your calls wherever you want (voice or fax - see fax could just go direct from mail server to mail server over SMTP, and if not available use the traditional number). However, guess who has to implement ENUM? The local telco providers who have been assigned numbers have to implement it - and guess what, none of the traditional Bell companies have done that or will do that anytime soon because it allows you to bypass their services and control how your number is called. I could see Google changing all this (at least between VOIP-enabled providers). TPC [tpc.int] has tried to make this happen, but really it needs to be done at your service-provider level so you don't have to manage DNS: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-2/enum.html [cisco.com].
Regarding revenue, I'm sure it'll be the same as Google Apps. Free for certain features, pay for other. Perhaps Google will make it free for all at first, get folks hooked, and then pay.
Competing in the corporate world will be hard, however. All of these features I've heard of, you can do with a Cisco CallManager/Unity platform. One-reach number forwarding, listening to calls as the caller leaves the message (plus telling the system to take the call, which prompts the person calling with, "Your party can take your call now, please stand by," and then two-way voice goes through), per-number-filtering (profiles, etc.), initiating calls from your cell's smart-app (this is really SIP, and what occurs is Google would place a call out to your cell and the party you wish to call at the same time, presenting you with the caller's number on your callerid, and presenting them with your Google number on their callerid, thus "masking" the phone you calling from), text to speed (read your email to you), speech to text (convert speech to text), fax to email, email to fax, SIP VOIP to your telco so no need for a PRI or analog trunks. All that, and you don't have to worry about Google turning "evil."
However, I, as a small business owner, I cannot afford the hardware and licensing to do this. I'd love to pay Google for such a feature without a huge capital investment. I'm sure others would too.
Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features). In the Cisco world, you just hang up the cell call and it's still there for 2 seconds and you can pick it up on your desk. Or, if you were on your desk and needed to step away, you just press "Mobile" and the system dials your cell (but the desk call isn't affected at all) and as soon as you hang up your desk phone the two-way audio cuts through on your cell. While on a traditional phone system you could just transfer your call to your cell, the advantage is you can drop back to your desk phone (or any other office phone that you log into) without having to transfer it from your cell (thus tying up two voice paths and running up your cell minutes).
Anyway, it is cool tech, and I'm glad to see Google bringing it to the masses.
Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features).
You can actually do this. Say you have your cell, home and office phones listed in your account. If you're on a GVoice call on your cell, when you get to one of the other phones, you can hit * (I think) and it causes the other phones to ring. Pick it up and you can hang up the cell phone and keep going where you left off.
There is no revenue yet. My thinking is that Google is doing the same thing with this that they do with YouTube, which is the following:
They need the tool themselves, and once it's implemented on a scale that suits their internal needs, the cost for giving free access to it to the outside world is incremental.
They use the tool to give fodder to their engineers who always need interesting data to play with or another playground for exploring new ideas.
I just want to add that you can initiate a call from your phone directly. You can call your own Google number and then press "2" to dial out to a new number (including international) and end with a "#" to start ringing. I now have a few international numbers on speed dial on my cell phone (I have bought some google credit for this), the entries are in the format:
my_google_number p 2 p destiantion_number #
note that "p" inserts a ~2 second pause on most dialers.
To get this working seamlessly you need to go to your account settings and disable PIN entry for mail box and use caller ID instead to identify your cell phone as authorized to go straight in. If you don't want to do that you need to include the right pauses and pin dialing codes in that example above.
Just as long as Verizon, Skype, and AT&T take for whatever purpose they want. The same laws apply to everyone.
Its not the conversation content you'll have to worry about (that's protected from interception by all but the NSA). Its whom you call, or calls you. That data has been for sale for a decade or so.
As for embracing things too quickly, go put on your tin foil hat, and just don't sign up for the service. You are not REQUIRED to sign up for this service. You can keep your own privacy if you don't trust Google to abide by its own terms and conditions.
Actually, he may have no choice. If someone else signs up for it, and then calls him...they have forced the use of GV on him. This same concern came up during the rollout of gmail.
I wonder.... (Score:4, Insightful)
... how long it will be before we see a civil or criminal suit arising from a competitor, user or law-enforcement looking for a user.
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We all wonder when posters will quit using the subject line for beginning a sentence. Aargh!
Does... (Score:5, Funny)
...it bother you when people do that?
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I think this joke might be just about played ou... (Score:5, Funny)
...t.
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There you go (Score:5, Funny)
.
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Re:I wonder.... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm waiting.... (Score:3, Interesting)
for this for my G1. I'm surprised this wasn't included, even though it's in closed beta. PF Voicemail Fusion works ok, but youmail is horrible for the G1. Google Voice already has an android app, so I can't wait!
Re:I'm waiting.... (Score:4, Interesting)
I ended up giving my real number to anyone that mattered. I still use my Google Voice number for anything online or calls/text messages that I potentially want to screen. It's a great service but it didn't work for me as an every day number.
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Re:I'm waiting.... (Score:5, Informative)
I didn't find the GV android app to be all that usable. The extra overhead ended up making me miss a lot of calls that I wouldn't otherwise have. Another problem was that dialing out either involved using the GV application which dials your Google Voice number and places the call via their system or making calls from your real number. The former put a 10 - 15 second overhead on making a call and the latter tends to confuse people because they are receiving a call from a different number than the one they (were told to) call.
If you haven't tried the latest version, I recommend you do so; it makes the dialing process much more seamless. If you still have problems with, don't hesitate to shoot me an email: gv {at} evancharlton {dot} com (that goes for anyone else that has questions or suggestions).
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Re:I'm waiting.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's fantastic. I now have instant junk call filtering - I just send to voice on my cellphone and the caller get the disconnect signal after a ring or two.
My friends all get custom greetings before leaving voice mail, and I receive an email as soon as they do. Also, I can play back my messages in the order I want without using a
How big is the market? (Score:2)
It seems to me that the same people that would be all for a techy solution like this are the very same people who are unlikely to even own a landline. Nearly universally, everyone who I know in their mid 20s - early 30s don't have a landline and have only one number - their cellphone.
I can see a market for this for intense businessmen who might have 2 lines at home, a private line at work, and another line at their second home. But is there a demand from the tech savy young google user?
Re:How big is the market? (Score:5, Interesting)
Nearly universally, everyone who I know in their mid 20s - early 30s don't have a landline
The same used be be true for me, but now my parents, aunts and uncles, former teachers, etc. have all switched. I would say that nearly every person I know 15-62 have switched solely to cell phones in place of home phones. The two people I know with a home phone, my grandfather (85) and grandmother (82) switched to Vonage over two years ago to the complete surprise of the entire family. Reason they gave "It's a fixed monthly cost that works for what they need."
I really think the traditional home phone line could be dead in a decade or so.
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Even if you only have one line, you might like to use this. If a business asks for your phone number, you could give them the Google Talk number. Then, if they abuse it, you simply tell Google Talk to either always push them to voice mail or (better yet) to play the "this line is disconnected" message.
Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder if we'll be able to register that line on the DNC list.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I imagine you could, but political campaigns and charities can ignore the DNC list anyway. More importantly, Google Voice gives you a lot more control over screening your calls before you answer them.
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Informative)
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Naw. We're all geeks here (right?) - setting up the software is the fun part. We do this shit because it's interesting to us -- and that's also the reason that we're so pale.
The real difficulty in operating one's own personal PBX is maintaining the sodden thing and the hardware that runs it, and then trying to justify paying for it.
In this context, Google Voice works just fine for a single independent user, has zero maintenance, and is free. I don't even need an Internet connection for to work -- the who
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now telemarketers, religious freaks, and campaign-donation guys will be able to find me no matter where I am.
I am a Google voice user.
Zero automated telemarketing calls get through to me. The system defaults to requiring callers with previously unseen caller-id's to state their name before it will even ring my real phone(s). No automated system knows how to do that so far.
Even if a real person calls and does get past the name prompt, I can "answer" the phone by sending the call to voice-mail and listening in, the way you can with a real physical answering machine.
I am also able to blacklist specific caller-id numbers to either go directly to voice-mail or to play the "this number has been disconnected" recording and tone pattern.
Worst case, I can also configure all unknown caller-id numbers to go directly to voice-mail too.
Since signing up with GrandCentral a year or two ago (the predecessor company that google purchased) my annoying call rate has gone to zero.
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Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Informative)
Not exactly innovative. Verizon gave me that at my apartment in 2002.
What exactly is your point? The service as a whole is very useful, and somewhat innovative. There are precedents for many--if not all--of the features, but many of them would have required a staffed calling center not that long ago.
So here's an example of what I like. I can always route my parents to my home number, and my friends to my office during the day, my cell phone at night. I can route colleagues to my office by day, direct to voice mail at night. If I'm going on vacation and staying at a cabin where cell signal is bad, and I want to be reached by one particular friend, I can route their calls to the cabin's land-line before I leave.
And then beyond all that, when people leave a voice mail, GVoice automatically transcribes it. It's not perfect, but it's often faster to get the idea of what they called about without having to listen to a long, rambling VM.
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Of course, the whole point is that you get to decide which of your contacts can reach you at which phone. You can make it so that if they're not in your contact list, they get voice mail only.
You can also screen callers (they state their name to a recording) based on whether they are in your contact list or whether they are blocking caller ID.
Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:5, Funny)
Now telemarketers, religious freaks, and campaign-donation guys will be able to find me no matter where I am.
Hey!
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Re:Oh, that's just great... (Score:4, Funny)
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Where are the Telco's Lawyers (Score:3, Interesting)
Queue Dr. Evil '1 million phone numbers... MMUUUAAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAH!'
It certainly sounds like a big number, but it isn't. What I am wondering is what the Telco execs are doing about it.
A little history for ./ The telco's stuck it to Vonage two different ways.
1. whisper campaign in the equity markets claiming Vonage didn't own the value-drivers in their business. 100% bunk. Amazon doesn't own the 'tubes' that connect to their service, has fantastical valuations. With Vonage, it *is* a very big problem??? But equity manager ran with it and hammered Vonage.
2. Patent litigation. Especially bad and ridiculously obvious patents were used to extract the Telco's vig. (hint, look up the word vigorish)
Google's much more well-capitalized and swimming in the deep end of Telco waters if they attempt to unify POTS/wireless with VOIP. When will Telco exec's send the legal dogs after Google?
Re:Where are the Telco's Lawyers (Score:4, Informative)
Whisper campaign? Well, let's see. If the end-game for Vonage is to replace the existing hardwired telephone service there is one little problem - they need the wires to be maintained for their customer's DSL links. Nobody really believes that the wireline maintenance is going to be covered by the revenue generated by selling naked DSL service.
The end result of this is Vonage can be a bit player off to the side but should they "succeed" they really fail. Not a good overall strategy. Yes, I guess you could say they don't own the value-drivers. More importantly, they desperately need their competition in order to survive. And their competition has to be both doing well enough to support their business and make it possible for them to compete.
Worse yet for Vonage and their ilk is that the government has mandated the wireline telephone companies have to provide for data services and bulk-purchased voice services to be priced below real costs. As long as these services are provided to a few players and the main part of the telco revenue is still providing telephone service everything will be fine. But, again, should Vonage or any of their sort really "succeed", they fail.
Would the right answer be to forcibly separate the wireline facilities from the telco voice providers? Sure, except under current rules no wireline facility could operate because the services that are sold today to outside companies are done so at a loss. There are a lot of wires out there and the maintenance of this is quite costly. Today that bill is paid for by voice services, mostly for business customers that have entirely different billing arrangements than residential customers do.
So pulling the facilities management away from the telcos would simply require the data and bulk services to be sold at real prices. So the $14.99 DSL service would be more like $99. At today's pricing it makes sense for an individual to drop their $25 telephone and $15 DSL to something like $15 DSL and Magic Jack at $20 a year. If the DSL service was priced including wireline maintenance costs, it wouildn't be practical at all. The real problem there would be lost of people can't afford $1200 a year for Internet and would drop it. Loss of market share like this would cripple plenty of things and would change the landscape of Internet service providers in the US.
What is the real answer? I suspect it is to abandon wireline maintenance completely and replace it with new fiber optic links from a completely new company. In about 50 years. In the meantime, we will have the existing wires in the ground and on the poles until they need repair. And with nobody repairing it, people will just do without wired connections.
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Lame anecdotal evidence (Score:2, Interesting)
"I know some of my friends check the Google Voice page almost every day to see when they can grab a number and get started using it."
And I have friends who have never heard of Google Voice and completely lack the technical understanding to want to use it. I hate it when people use anecdotal evidence to suggest how great or grand something is going to be.
Most of my friends actually have just one phone (their cell) to their name anyway. While I see some of the features being semi-useful for a single-phone use
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There are a lot of reasons why one might want to take calls directly on a different line than their cell phone.
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I have sometimes thought that such a service would be handy (and, in fact, I know someone who uses one) but he has to manually tell the service where he is all the time. Granted, it's a quick process, but it's one more thing to think about. Sometimes h
But I don't want you to call my mobile! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Actually, you can flag numbers to direct straight to voice mail. Which then gets transcibed into and email. The service gives you some pretty good controls over handling calls and routing, based on factors like time, caller and your availability.
In your case, you can give out the number freely and only forward people in your "Friends" group to you cell phone.
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Abuse (Score:3, Interesting)
I want Jenny's number... (Score:5, Funny)
inbound number transfer (Score:2)
If Google has a number shortage, it's kind of odd that they don't let people transfer their existing numbers to Google Voice. That would probably free up a lot of the numbers they already have.
I have a Google Voice number, and if I could transfer my existing number into it, I would do so.
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What happens when Google Voice is down? Privacy? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just curious, if you are using a Google Voice number as your "one number to rule them all", and the service is down, what happens? Even if it goes down temporarily (as Gmail does constantly, ahem) does that mean incoming calls cant get to you?
Also, since Google is obviously able to hijack the voice audio, what's to say they aren't listening to / recording calls? I realize they "aren't evil" but, still.
I like the concept of this service, but don't want to have my incoming calls relying on Google's service to make it through.
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Not sure where the bad attitude is coming from, I never suggested that these things *do* happen, just asking about the potential for them to happen. And my first question was just that, a question, if it absolutely relies on google's service to route your call through.
Additionally, it introduces ANOTHER variable of service into the mix. Now I rely on my telco to work, with this, I rely on my telco AND Google to work.
And Google's track record with gmail being up and down in my own personal experience is no
Does EVERYONE here blindly trust google?! (Score:3, Interesting)
They own your primary e-mail address, route your telephone conversations, facilitate your mailing list, keep track of your calendar, engineer your cell phone platform, access maps for you, host your videos, and answer any question you could have about anything through their search engine.
First question: Do you really think they are funded by ad revenue? How many ads have you clicked on since you started surfing the web?
Second question: What is more profitable, providing free web services, or selling personal data they have been harvesting for years, many times tied to an IP, MAC, Username, and the identity created by the consistencies of your browsing habits?
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One reason I never liked other net phone services is that you can't dial 911 and when my computer reboots, or decides to explode, my phone dies;
Vonage (VoIP) understands 911 just fine, though yes, no computer, no phone. But there are many people who have no land line at all, instead using only cell...
Re:Will it work when my nets die? Or with 911? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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A VOIP app to bypass the phone number altogether... that would change the world.
But the question remains: where's the revenue?
Re:Will it work when my nets die? Or with 911? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm sure any calls between Google VOIP customers will be VOIP on the backend. I'm sure they'll integrate it into Google Talk as well, and then your end could be totally VOIP, and if the other party uses Google Talk it would be VOIP end-to-end. Further, if they're smart, they'll let you use your SIP-based "hard" phones with the service as well.
Second, ENUM is already standard that allows you to use DNS to direct your calls wherever you want (voice or fax - see fax could just go direct from mail server to mail server over SMTP, and if not available use the traditional number). However, guess who has to implement ENUM? The local telco providers who have been assigned numbers have to implement it - and guess what, none of the traditional Bell companies have done that or will do that anytime soon because it allows you to bypass their services and control how your number is called. I could see Google changing all this (at least between VOIP-enabled providers). TPC [tpc.int] has tried to make this happen, but really it needs to be done at your service-provider level so you don't have to manage DNS: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_5-2/enum.html [cisco.com].
Regarding revenue, I'm sure it'll be the same as Google Apps. Free for certain features, pay for other. Perhaps Google will make it free for all at first, get folks hooked, and then pay.
Competing in the corporate world will be hard, however. All of these features I've heard of, you can do with a Cisco CallManager/Unity platform. One-reach number forwarding, listening to calls as the caller leaves the message (plus telling the system to take the call, which prompts the person calling with, "Your party can take your call now, please stand by," and then two-way voice goes through), per-number-filtering (profiles, etc.), initiating calls from your cell's smart-app (this is really SIP, and what occurs is Google would place a call out to your cell and the party you wish to call at the same time, presenting you with the caller's number on your callerid, and presenting them with your Google number on their callerid, thus "masking" the phone you calling from), text to speed (read your email to you), speech to text (convert speech to text), fax to email, email to fax, SIP VOIP to your telco so no need for a PRI or analog trunks. All that, and you don't have to worry about Google turning "evil."
However, I, as a small business owner, I cannot afford the hardware and licensing to do this. I'd love to pay Google for such a feature without a huge capital investment. I'm sure others would too.
Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features). In the Cisco world, you just hang up the cell call and it's still there for 2 seconds and you can pick it up on your desk. Or, if you were on your desk and needed to step away, you just press "Mobile" and the system dials your cell (but the desk call isn't affected at all) and as soon as you hang up your desk phone the two-way audio cuts through on your cell. While on a traditional phone system you could just transfer your call to your cell, the advantage is you can drop back to your desk phone (or any other office phone that you log into) without having to transfer it from your cell (thus tying up two voice paths and running up your cell minutes).
Anyway, it is cool tech, and I'm glad to see Google bringing it to the masses.
Parent
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Further, if Google's smart-app running on the phones do this right, you'll be able to seamlessly transfer a call that you answered on you cell on your desk (plus all the other features).
You can actually do this. Say you have your cell, home and office phones listed in your account. If you're on a GVoice call on your cell, when you get to one of the other phones, you can hit * (I think) and it causes the other phones to ring. Pick it up and you can hang up the cell phone and keep going where you left off.
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There may be other things they are doing, like s
You CAN intiate a call from your phone directly (Score:5, Informative)
my_google_number p 2 p destiantion_number #
note that "p" inserts a ~2 second pause on most dialers.
To get this working seamlessly you need to go to your account settings and disable PIN entry for mail box and use caller ID instead to identify your cell phone as authorized to go straight in. If you don't want to do that you need to include the right pauses and pin dialing codes in that example above.
Parent
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Just as long as Verizon, Skype, and AT&T take for whatever purpose they want. The same laws apply to everyone.
Its not the conversation content you'll have to worry about (that's protected from interception by all but the NSA). Its whom you call, or calls you. That data has been for sale for a decade or so.
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When someone calls and they record the phone call Google Voice will automatically say the phone call is being recorded, see the faq: http://www.google.com/support/voice/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=115037 [google.com]
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Actually, he may have no choice. If someone else signs up for it, and then calls him...they have forced the use of GV on him.
This same concern came up during the rollout of gmail.